


Hic Et Nunc

by ArtemisTheHuntress



Series: Purimgifts 2020! [2]
Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Collection: Purimgifts Day 2, Gen, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Life in the TARDIS, ridiculous TARDIS problems
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-09
Updated: 2020-03-09
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:22:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22842445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArtemisTheHuntress/pseuds/ArtemisTheHuntress
Summary: The TARDIS starts hopping all over the universe at random.  This isn't the weirdest ormostworrying thing it's ever done, but it's a bit weird and worrying.  Romana and the Doctor try to solve this.
Series: Purimgifts 2020! [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1632490
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4
Collections: Purimgifts 2020





	Hic Et Nunc

**Author's Note:**

  * For [itwasadarkandstormynight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/itwasadarkandstormynight/gifts).



> For Purimgifts exchange day 2! I'm not all that familiar with most Old Who or the DW Expanded Universe, but I wanted to give it a shot based on the range of fun shenanigans that TARDIS travel lends itself to - hope you like it!

The TARDIS finished charging itself on solar radiation, gulping down energy from a star just shedding its outer layer in the first stage of going nova… and then the central console vibrated, flashed a glow, gave a piercing _yip_ , and sent out a shockwave that nearly knocked Romana sprawling.

The loud “Oof!” and thud she heard behind her suggested that it succeeded in sending the Doctor sprawling.

“Doctor?” Romana asked, and he scrambled to his feet. Then the whole TARDIS shuddered, Romana braced herself against the wall, and the Doctor fell down again.

“That felt like movement,” Romana said, swooping over to the console to check. “We didn’t tell the TARDIS to go anywhere. That isn’t a good sign. That – ah.”

“Ah,” said the Doctor, scrambling over to see what she was looking at. “Yes. Well, that’s not where we’re supposed to be, is it.”

The screen on the TARDIS console showed outside an idyllic sunset vista. The TARDIS was apparently perched on a lovely green grassy hill, with a quaint little town just starting to light up warm twinkling windows below.

“That isn’t good,” Romana said.

“It looks like a pleasant enough town. If we go out and take a look –”

The TARDIS shuddered again, made the same glow and high-pitched _yip_ and rippling shockwave, and with a lurch the location-scene on the console changed. They were in space again, in distant orbit around a massive planet with a ring system all the colours of the rainbow arcing below them.

“How did we get here?” Romana asked.

“Where is here?” the Doctor responded. “When is here?”

“The TARDIS says… the planet Algorapax VII, in the… sixty-second century? Well, that’s rather absurd. There’s no reason for anyone to visit the sixty-second century. Nothing of interest happened here.”

“There’s a delightful café on Argo in the sixty-second century,” the Doctor offered.

“Oh. Well, if we’re here, and it appears we are, shall we go?”

“Can’t, I’m afraid. I’m banned.”

“How many times have you been banned from Argo, Doctor?”

“Only two! … No, wait, four.”

“Well, as long as we’re stable –”

The words had barely left her mouth when the console lurched under her hands with the same glow, same sound, and, though the TARDIS was not responding to anything she was doing, its motions felt… almost familiar, somehow.

“TARDIS, my dear,” the Doctor said, getting up from the ground once again, and patting the console gingerly, “if you’re upset about something this is not the way to express it, and after you just drank your fill from that nice supernova and should be in top working order –”

“That’s it!” Romana said. “It drank up the nova energy too fast – Doctor, the TARDIS isn’t doing this on purpose, it just has the hiccoughs!”

“Oh!” he said. “Adorable, I didn’t know that –”

Lurch, glow, shockwave, sound – which, while sounding more like the tightest string on a guitar breaking than anything else, could be construed as something like _hic!_ – and strobe-like starlight flashed against Romana’s and the Doctor’s faces.

“Maybe less adorable,” Romana said. “We are... _dangerously_ close to a pulsar, Doctor, we’re going to fall into its gravity well if we don’t move very soon. If the TARDIS can’t control where it goes –”

“– it might hiccough us right into the center of a star, or a black hole, or something equally unpleasant to spend eternity in,” the Doctor concluded the thought.

“How do you cure hiccoughs in a multidimensional spacetime machine?”

“Don’t have the slightest idea. I’ve never seen a reliable cure for hiccoughs for a simple squishy biological being, let alone something like the TARDIS.” He looked at the central console pensively. “Jump at it and yell ‘boo!’ ?”

“Has that ever once worked?” Romana asked, exasperated.

“Oh, never,” said the Doctor, “but it’s classic to try.” He paused, thinking. “Can we try the swallowing-water-upside-down trick? That’s worked for me before.”

“Where are we going to find an upside-down in zero-gravity space?” Romana said, pushing console buttons in a sequence that normally worked to ground the TARDIS and drop it out of timestream travel. The TARDIS faltered, and seemed like it was stabilizing. She could hope. “How about holding its breath? What is the TARDIS’s equivalent to breath?”

“Hmm,” the Doctor said, and then flash, shudder, _yip_ , shockwave, and the pulsing light stopped.

Romana checked the screen once more, and saw nothing but gentle empty space, spotted silently with distant stars.

“... or,” the Doctor said, “we can guess that hiccoughs do go away on their own quickly enough, and remember that space is, in fact, very big and mostly very empty, and put our faith in the laws of probability.”

They spent a few seconds staring at the screen showing the dark field of space outside, and when the TARDIS hiccoughed again, it read that they were in an entirely different but entirely identical section of empty space. Romana sighed, part in resignation and part in relief, and said, “If they’re not gone in half an hour, we may have a rather bigger problem on our hands.”

Then she settled down with a book about the history of the Second Aldebaran Dancing War that she’d been meaning to get to for a while now, and figured that this was probably the first emergency she’d yet witnessed during her travels with the Doctor for which “ignore it and hope it goes away on its own” was a logical and viable strategy.

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from the Latin phrase meaning "here and now." Doctor Who always lends itself to puns.
> 
> Chag Purim Sameach!


End file.
